DARK LANDS

THURSDAY 10 OCTOBER HOLYWELL MUSIC ROOM, 1 PM

The darker depths of the Scandinavian character are turned upside down by Grieg’s explosive and exhilarating quartet, based

on his song Fiddlers

Jean Sibelius (1865 - 1957) Valse Triste for piano solo

Jean Sibelius (1865 - 1957) Malinconia for cello and piano

Ole Bull (1810 - 1880) La Melancholie

Edvard Grieg (1843–1907) Spillemaend (Fiddlers) song

Edvard Grieg (1843–1907) String quartet no. 1 in G minor op. 27Un poco andante - Allegro molto ed agitato

Romanze: AndantinoIntermezzo: Allegro molto marcato - Più vivo e scherzando

Finale: Lento - Presto al saltarello

Heini Kärkkäinen | Henning Kraggerud | Antti Tikkanen | Cecilia Tomter | Lars Anders Tomter | Bjorg Vaernes

Sibelius wrote his Valse Triste in 1904 for a play by his brother-in-law, Järnefelt. In it, a woman delirious with fever rises from her bed to dance with an imaginary partner; halfway through, a mysterious man - Death himself - enters and takes over the waltz. Despite the lugubrious storyline, the waltz was an instant, international hit - at a time when Sibelius was only just beginning to be known abroad. Malinconia was written a few years earlier, shortly after his adored daughter Kirsti, not yet two years old, died in a typhoid epidemic. It is the polar opposite of the Valse Triste, being almost without melody, more a matter of gesture and colour – yet wildly expressive, rather than numbly restrained.

Ole Bull was the first Norwegian superstar, a largely self-taught prodigy of the violin, whose enormous energy sustained him through arduous self-promoted tours of Europe (he gave 274 concerts throughout Britain in 1837) and then pre-civil war America. Schumann thought him as brilliant as Paganini. He was perhaps the first musical nationalist, ardently promoting Norwegian folk music – but he gave the same attention to American folk tunes. La Melancholie is one of around 70 short pieces he composed for his own concerts.

Grieg's First string quartet of 1877 just doesn't fit the music-history narrative. Quartets are supposed to be full of interweaving lines - this is almost orchestral. Quartets were Central European High Art, not the province of a mere Norwegian tunesmith. But this is a remarkable piece, with all four movements strongly linked via transformations of Grieg's song Spillemaend. Despite the melancholy of the song, the quartet soars vigorously, as Grieg wanted. And although music history has largely ignored it, it clearly influenced Debussy's great quartet 16 years later.